I finally got it and want to share the necessary steps with you.

1. You need at last an 2GB USB-Stick to put Linuxes and VistaPE including some tools on it.

2. Download the following:
Grub4Dos - Grub4Dos Homepage
GrubUtils - GrubUtil Homepage

3. Unzip the packages of the downloaded archives

4. To install Grub4Dos under Windows you need the grubinst.exe utility from the GrubUtils package.
Grub does not use drive letters (like "c:") or devices (like "/dev/hda") but drive numbers like hd0.
You can find the drive numbers in the diskmangement mmc plugin - the numbers the devices got there are the device numbers.
WARNING: Be sure to install the GRUB bootsector on the correct disk or your local harddisk won't boot anymore!!!
If you know the device number of you USB device:

Where hd1 is the USB device.

5. Copy grldr from the Grub4Dos package to the root of your USB device.

6. Create a menu.lst file in the root of you USB device.
My example shows a file booting the following:




A. To boot other linuxes it's most easy to copy the kernel and options from the isolinux config file of a live-cd.
If possible try to find an USB-boot kernel option as otherwise
- your USB device is mounted read-only
- your USB device will be "ejected" on shutdown - some BIOSes power them down
- in my example Helix is booting this way - there is an option "persistance" but the it will load ALL HDDs read-write - and I surely don't want that in a forensic system....

B. With chainloader you can also boot BartPE or other PEs



C. As you've seen the bootloaders of the Windows OSes were renamed.
To do that Grub4Dos won't find any bootsectors that it might find on any local disks

D. You could also boot DOS/Win9x.
I've not included that as it's - in my opinion - primitive technology.
Google for that if you want to do that...

I hope someone finds this guide useful....

Thanks to jaclaz and the Grub4Dos Guide website

Adding a wallpaper to the Multiboot Menu

If you want to add a nice background image to your boot menu - which looks cool and impressive to your colleagues or costumers - continue as outlined:

1. Create a gzipped xpm-Picture
1.1. you can do this under Windows with Gimp and ImageMagick - but the results are quite poor
Warning: Gimp under Windows produces a non-standard xpm-file
1.2. as you are already toying around with Live-Systems start your Linux of choice
1.3. open your picture in GIMP
1.4. reduce picture size to 640*480
1.5. reduce the color palette to 14 colors
1.6. save the image as xpm-file

2. gzip the picture
2.1. gzip IS NOT zip !!!
2.2. open a shell and navigate to the folder were your image is saved
2.3. enter "gzip mypicture.xpm"
2.4. "mypicture.xpm.gz" is created

3. Copy the xpm.gz-file to your USB-drive

4. Edit menu.lst as follows:



5. foreground and background colors in hex RGB notation (RRGGBB)

6. Warning: older Grub4Dos versions used a "=" to seperate the parameters - that won't work on current versions!

If I may give a further suggestion, it would be advisable to use a uniquely named "tag file" instead of grldr for setting ROOT.

I.e. :

instead of


this way, even if there is a grldr on the HD or any other connected mass storage device, grub4dos won't risk getting "confused".

Thanks for sharing your tutorial.

jaclaz

Adding a submenu: